“Why would I do that? It was all hopeless by then.” He pressed his lips shut, as if to crush the memory of those myriad disappointments, and gazed away from my face. “Besides, he helped artists and writers and such. Who was I? Do you know the Yiddish word chutzpah?” Although he meant the word in its traditional sense of shameless effrontery, I privately thought my grandmother had shown it in the American sense of self-confident audacity. I wondered whether they’d argued about her writing that letter, and although loath to mention my grandmother again, I saw no way around it. “My grandmother says that she made raffia sandals and you helped her, that summer, and that she—”
“She made them?” he interrupted. “We made them.” He sniffed. “She wouldn’t have been able to do it without me. It was hard work. Crocheting the raffia tightly was difficult enough, but she wasn’t strong enough to sew the soles together, once she’d made them. We spent all day together, working on those shoes.”
All day together. I saw them sitting at that kitchen table, bent over the same task, united. All the things that must have bound them to each other: waiting to hear from the American Relief Center in the hope it had found some way to get them out of France, waiting to hear from the shop in Marseille, waiting to hear from the woman who’d sold them the raffia. And beyond that, all the little ingenuities their everyday life demanded of them—not to mention missing their old life, craving things they could not have—and, threading through it all, fear. They must have loved each other, I thought, even if it was only the causal consequence of eating together, working together, sleeping together. Surviving together. Sourrwviving.
“Did you …” Did you love her? I wanted to ask. I hesitated; my courage failed. “Did you like it?” I finished, lamely. “That is, I mean, did you find it satisfying, working together? Selling something you had made?”
He looked thoughtful, almost dreamy. “When I look back …”
I waited.
“When I look back, it’s as if … it’s as if I were blowing on leaves. Like a layer of leaves spread out”… he held his palms together, facing up, “and I blow on them”… he blew a puff of air over his hands, “and they lift for just a second”… he made a fluttery, upward motion, “and fall”… he fluttered them down again, “before I can really see what’s under them.”
Julien had told me to call him if I wanted a ride from the station in Montélimar when I returned from my grandfather’s, and so I conquered my shyness and did. When I stepped out of the train, I saw him waiting for me in his old gray Citro?n. He got out of the car as I approached, and we kissed three times, left cheek, right cheek, left cheek, as people do in the Ardèche. He put my bag in the backseat. “How was it?” he asked. “How’s your grandfather?”
“It’s hard to tell.” I recounted our adventure with the kettle.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do when he can’t live on his own anymore?”
We left Montélimar and drove over the Rh?ne River. “I have thought about it. And I don’t know. He has no plans, and he doesn’t seem to believe it’s ever going to happen. And it’s not like I can force him to move.”
“What about your mom and your uncle?”
“They’re so far away … what can they do? At least I can keep an eye on him.”
“But then who keeps an eye on you?”
I shrugged. I had felt excited, excited in a purely youthful, nongrandparent-obsessed way, upon seeing Julien. His questions made my heart swerve back to all my worries, and I felt a bit like crying, which in turn made me feel embarrassed. It felt strange, talking to someone who seemed to tap into my feelings so directly.
“You and your questions.” I mustered a smile. “I don’t have any answers today. Tell me what’s happening with you.”
“Same old, same old,” he said. “It was a pretty good week. Minus is getting big. Minette is going to reject her soon. I need to find her a home.” Minus was the kitten of Julien’s cat, Minette.
“I’d like a kitten.”
“You live too close.” He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes and grinned.
“Why is that a problem?”
“The kitten will find its way back to my house, and you’ll follow it, and my house will be even more crowded than before. You’ve seen my place. It’s small enough as it is.”
“Minus would stay with me,” I insisted. “I’d take good care of her. I’d shower her with affection.”
He laughed. “Seriously, I can’t give you a kitten. What would you do with it when you go back to America?”
“Maybe I don’t want to go back to America,” I countered. “Maybe I’d rather have a kitten.”
“Oh, really?”
“Who knows? I like it here.”
“Well, if I give you a kitten, does that mean you’ll stay?”
I smiled and shrugged. “We’ll see.”
Julien dropped me off in La Roche. “There’s a little music festival this weekend. You should come. Maybe I’ll see you there?”
When Saturday night arrived, I made myself go. I stayed out late, listening to music and chatting with people. I was pleased to discover how many familiar faces there now were in Alba. Toward the end of the evening, I ran into Julien, and he invited me back to his house for coffee. It was two o’clock in the morning, and neither of us is the kind of person who drinks coffee at two o’clock in the morning, but we’re both people who like to do what we say, so we sat at Julien’s table and drank our coffee, talking about this and that, Minus the kitten playing at our feet. When we had finished, there was a shy silence. “I should be going home,” I said, getting up. Julien rose, too, and walked me out onto his terrace, which was overgrown with honeysuckle. The stars were out. The air smelled sweet. It was chilly, and Julien wrapped his sweatshirt around my shoulders. He kissed me on the forehead. “Je vais m’occuper de toi,” he promised. “I’m going to look out for you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE NEXT DAY, A SUNDAY, I WALKED UP THE HILL to Alba to buy groceries for the week, my new market basket swinging on my arm. The first person I ran into was the innkeepers’ daughter, who winked and said, “Julien, huh?” I blushed and smiled, and she laughed. “Good for you. He’s a good guy.” And that was how I learned there are no secrets in a village the size of Alba.